While many South Africans slept on Monday, 19 October 2015, students at the University of Cape Town exercised their constitutional right to demonstrate and assemble. It is a right which is steeped in the memory and sacrifice of so many who fought for our collective freedom.

Around 200 students, peaceful, defiant and resolute, were calling for change at their tertiary institution. Some see this simply as students trespassing on university grounds and so it was inevitable that they would be reported to the South African Police Services (SAPS). These students participated in a peaceful demonstration, a sit-in, and the majority of them were outside the gates of what is officially known as the Bremner Building but which has been referred to by many as Azania House since the #RhodesMustFall days.

In response to their demonstration, the SAPS used stun grenades, teargas and Casspir vehicles to arrest and disperse the group. Around 40 students were arrested in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The SAPS in Rondebosch’s version was that the students were never arrested but simply detained and then let go after lawyers from National Association of Democratic Lawyers assisted in securing their release.

It is important to pause here and to state the obvious, that these events took place in a free and democratic South Africa. We witnessed police in riot gear proceed to round up students, who were exercising their section 17 right, using teargas and stun grenades. Even more troubling is the choice of vehicle. Historical amnesia seems to have gripped so many South Africans but let me remind you that the Casspir vehicle was used extensively during apartheid and is actually a ‘mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle‘.

This is how we treat our own. During the days of struggle, the University of Cape Town did everything in its power to prevent the police from coming onto campus. Today, we have forgotten our collective responsibility to build a South Africa that is more just, equitable and fair.

I am well aware that the ‘law-abiding’ chattering classes will claim that these students started a fire, or burnt buildings or damaged cars but those allegations are all mistruths designed to undermine their rallying call to action. The #FeesMustFall students were singing and gathering as they are constitutionally entitled to do. I am mindful that constitutional rights have limitations, however, the constitutional says “everyone has the right, peacefully and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present petitions”. The students on that night were doing exactly that.

The police claim that they were doing their job (riot gear, Casspirs, teargas and stun grenades etc) under the guise of a court order. The University of Cape Town in its flawed wisdom decided that the best course of action to deal with the #FeesMustFall group was to obtain an interim interdict court order from Justice James Yekiso of the Western Cape High Court. That court order is interim, and does not authorise SAPS to use of teargas or stun grenades.

As events unfolded in Cape Town, young South Africans and students in Stellenbosch, Johannesburg, Alice and Grahamstown were engaged in their own articulation of #FeesMustFall. This has happened before when students founded and led the creation of the Black Consciousness Movement, as well as the Soweto Uprising that saw 20,000 students participate in their own call for justice, equity and fairness.

Sadly, the vultures have already descended. The political actors are trying to worm their way into the narrative. A poor attempt at showing solidarity with #FeesMustFall yet completely missing the point that inequality and a lack of transformation of the normative structural society is the bone of contention and the issue that requires confrontation. After all, having completely missed the issue, these politicians are now focused on simply using #FeesMustFall for their own political agenda. We see them for what they are. Cheap attempts to colonise the narrative that they neither believe in nor understand.

You can’t police, silence or crush an idea. The #FeesMustFall idea is a rallying call for freedom, justice, equity and fairness. It is an idea that cannot be engaged with using force, court orders or intimidation. To do so will only ensure that others will begin to stand with the idea and the movement.

Now is not the time to take a formalistic view of the possibility of change, but rather the time to ask ourselves what sort of country we want to be living in. The students are once again leading the way. These students are committed to the idea that change is in fact possible. Margaret Mead said it well when she wrote “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”. Today, we see the beginning of that change. DM